Spam Blocked

The heyday of this blog was a few years ago when I had my hands less full of things to do, thus more time to write. I don’t post new blog articles as much as I used to. Imagine my surprise to see that my blog traffic is actually on the rise despite my relative silence. I guess people are really, really, really interested in the elections this cycle. When I look to see what is driving traffic to Buckeye RINO, I see people are digging up my endorsements in past election cycles, particularly in races lower on the ballot than the race for POTUS. I’m sorry all you readers who came to Buckeye RINO only to find news about years past and very little about this year.

For this primary election, the only local endorsement I’ll make is that I support Michele Silva Arredondo for Lorain County Common Pleas Court judge on the GOP ballot. I’ll remain silent on all the other local and state races.

In the GOP race for POTUS, I endorse John Kasich, and in the Democrat race, I endorse Bernie Sanders.

I’ve been hesistant to endorse a GOP candidate for U.S. President. In a blog article much earlier on in this election cycle, I chronicled how no candidate in either party excited me, and this is still the case. It seemed to me, on the GOP side, that as soon as I pick a favorite, my favorite drops out and then I have to search out another favorite, so I hope my endorsement, at this date, is not the kiss of death for John Kasich. For a while, I favored Bobby Jindal, then Rand Paul, then Carly Fiorina, then Ben Carson. Each has exited the stage.

I’ve had some beefs with Kasich. If you dig through Buckeye RINO, you’ll see some of my criticisms. But when I reflect upon my biggest disagreements with Kasich as governor, a number of those disagreements are about education. Education is a big issue when one is governor, but there are bigger fish to fry as President of the United States, one of which is the national debt that has our nation perched atop a crumbling economic precipice. Kasich balances budgets. Yes, it took government shutdowns during the Clinton administration to force the White House to accept the budgets, but it stuck. Ted Cruz has caused government shutdowns in the name of good fiscal policy, too, but Cruz doesn’t know how to remain friends within his own caucus. With Kasich’s government shutdowns, his colleagues were still his friends, which means that Kasich is better poised to identify a Congressional coalition that will help him govern as U.S. President.

Cruz actually made me angry when his staff pulled a stunt during the Iowa caucuses claiming that Ben Carson was dropping out. Cruz operatives apparently pulled the same stunt this past Tuesday in Hawaii at the expense of Marco Rubio. In these and other instances of dirty tricks, Cruz was very lawyerly in defending his campaign. How Clintonesque. What a turnoff.

See the little search window at the top of the left sidebar on Buckeye RINO? If you type in the search term “gambling,” you’ll see that I despise gambling. Trump, being the casino tycoon that he is, wasn’t likely to get my nod for nominee, anyway. Also, I have decried religious intolerance before, so when both Cruz and Trump harp on and on against Muslims, they are not winning any points with me. As for the flap about Trump somehow being in cahoots with the KKK, I think that’s all manufactured by the desperate. I fail to see past Trump conduct that fits with this seemingly manufactured narrative. If I see conduct from Trump in the future that smacks of racism, I’d be happy to call it out, but I fail to see such a pattern thus far.

Marco Rubio has revealed himself to be a candidate of the donor class, not a candidate of the grassroots.

Having said all of that, in November, I’ll vote for any of the Republicans over Hillary Clinton, should she be the Democrat nominee.

Democrat voters in 2008 made the right decision in nominating Barack Obama, notwithstanding I voted against him in November of 2008 and 2012. Yes, I disagree with much (but not all) that our current POTUS has done and is trying to do. Some have said he’s the worst president in history, but I’d have to disagree. There’ve been worse. Hillary Clinton, had she won it all in 2008, would have been worse. Bernie Sanders would be a far more ethical, far less corrupt president than Hillary Clinton would.

DOJ politicized under Obama? You bet. IRS politicized under Obama? You bet. But while Obama claimed that the IRS was a phony scandal perpetrated by a bad actor or two with no connection to the White House, I could easily envision an emboldened President Hillary Clinton issuing a charge to the DOJ and the IRS to take down the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that menaces her and the country (or at least menaces her plans for the country). With Obama, there’s denial. With Clinton, she’d be justifying it.

One may wonder: How can a right-of-center blogger favor Obama and Sanders over Clinton when they are further to the political left than Clinton? My reply would be that I sense that Hillary is capable of far more heinous treachery. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren is further to the left of Clinton, too, but if I had a choice between Warren and Clinton, I’d take Warren. As for Sanders’ socialism, I would just note that the political pendulum swings back and forth. Socialism won’t take firm root before it is out of vogue again. In the meantime, Sanders is more honest than our current president, more honest than many of the GOP candidates, and far more honest than Clinton. We could use some cleaning up of Beltway ethics, and I think Sanders could deliver on that front. Depending on the GOP nominee, there is a possibility I could vote for Sanders in November if he were the Democrat nominee. It depends on how dirty politics looks by then and how squeaky-clean Sanders looks by comparison when election time draws near.

A Sanders presidency may clean up corruption, whereas a Clinton presidency will maintain the status quo, letting the corruption continue. You can see it in the New Hampshire Democrat primary exit poll data that showed that it is the privileged Democrats who will benefit from a Clinton presidency. The only group of Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire were those who thought the country was headed in the right direction, who were not worried about the economy, who had not felt betrayed by their government or their political party, and whose annual income exceeded $200,000. Voters in subsequent primaries and caucuses should take note: If you are unhappy with the way things are right now, Hillary is not your candidate. She is there to do the bidding of the privileged Democrats who donate to her: Maintain the status quo. These privileged Clinton Democrats don’t have much in common, demographically, with the rest of the Democrat Party. The Clinton Democrats are the ones who pull all the levers within the party machine (hence the “superdelegates”), they often have prestigious titles working in America’s universities, liberal think tanks, non-profit organizations, and crony-capitalist businesses such as those on Wall Street. These people, if they get in trouble, they get bailed out. That’s who Clinton represents. If that description doesn’t fit you, then you have no business voting for her. Clinton and some media types have said what a wonderful thing the Democrat primary race where voters have two good choices and the candidates see eye-to-eye on most issues. This is a lie. The difference between who Sanders is and what he represents and who Clinton is and what she represents is huge. To me, it is the difference between broad sunlight (Sanders) and a dark alley (Clinton).

When I was a young boy (3rd grade), my career ambition was to be a U.S. Ambassador to France. With that thought in mind, I majored in international studies at Ohio State. Nowadays, my field of specialty is teaching English to speakers of other languages. When I contemplate the death of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, along with the deaths of three others at the hands of terrorists, it gives me chills. The terrorists acted upon information. For all I know, the information the terrorists acted upon came from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for she did not safeguard top-secret information, including information about U.S. assets and personnel abroad. Looking at events leading up to those deaths–where it seems that security vulnerabilities were deliberately overlooked–and looking at events unfold after mischief was clearly afoot in Benghazi–where it seems that the opportunity to evacuate was doable but somehow deliberately nixed–I can only arrive at the conclusion that Stevens’ death was the desired outcome. Was he a man who knew too much? Even if his death were merely due to Clinton’s negligence, rather than malfeasance, it is still too much for me to stomach. If I were a U.S. Ambassador to anywhere, I’d want the U.S. government to have my back.

Hillary Clinton tried to rig the elections in 2008, but Barack Obama outsmarted her. She has outdone herself this time around, with nearly every superdelegate handpicked for their loyalty to her. The election on the Democrat side is rigged. Only rank-and-flle Democrat voters have the power to throw a monkey wrench into her machine, and I hope they’ll do just that.

As for a brokered GOP convention, I do not favor the pandemonium that Mitt Romney seems to invite. If Trump has the delegates, then he’s the nominee. If Trump goes on to lose the election, then the establishment can engage in party-building after that (and get in touch with the grassroots) and make a push for redemption. If Trump goes on to win the election and the establishment still cannot make amends with him and thus will not allow him to be their standard-bearer going forward, then found a new political party and recruit elected Republican legislators across the country to switch to this new party starting in January. If this new party succeeds well enough at this recruitment, it could conceivably enact laws in many states that would grant major-party status to their new creation. If we’re to have a falling out, let’s have it then, after January, in the broad light of day. Make new rules then. Don’t bend and break rules midstream this July in some smoke-filled convention backroom to thwart a vast array of voters.

I hope that Ohio will do the right thing. Kasich for the Republicans. Sanders for the Democrats. Make November a sweeter pill to swallow.

Labor Day 2014 finds me back in Lorain County, the home of Ohio’s largest annual festival (actually, it is always held in Lorain on the Sunday immediately preceding Labor Day) devoted to labor unions. After reading through Elyria’s Chronicle-Telegram and Lorain’s Morning Journal, I have felt the urge to respond to some of the political speechifying at Sunday’s Labor Fest (officially titled “20th annual Lorain County Organized Labor Day Family Celebration”) as reported by these two newspapers.

As I have written before, I am a Republican who has run for public office who supports organized labor. I know many other Republicans, locally, who support organized labor even though local union leaders have often been antagonistic toward said Republicans.

Thus, let me begin with a criticism of the remarks offered by U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Lorain), as quoted in this Chronicle-Telegram story:

“You’re getting Republicans that have supported Mitt Romney, that are supporting John Kasich, that are supporting anti-labor, anti-women’s health, anti-voting rights agenda that national Republicans have.” Brown is supposedly talking about Republicans in elected office here, Lorain County, at the local level. Wait a minute . . . who the heck is he talking about? I can name names of anti-labor Republican office holders at the state level, but I’m scratching my head trying to think of who, possibly, Brown is talking about at the local level. For one thing, there are very few Republicans in office at the local level. The CT reporter, Evan Goodenow, indicated that Lorain County Commissioner Tom Williams–the sole Republican county commissioner–shook his head at Brown’s remarks. Evidently, if Brown was referring to Williams, then Brown was lying. Williams would be the expert on where Williams stands, not Brown. It stands to reason that Williams would not even have been in attendance if what Brown had said was absolutely true. Being there, and being visible there as a public figure, is a choice Williams made. He didn’t have to be there. That he chose to be there is evidence that Williams does not consider himself to be an enemy of the labor unions. Reportedly, Williams spoke personally with Brown after the speech and assured him that he supported labor. Brown said he didn’t know who Williams was. Brown must not have been referring to Williams. It is clear, by this revelation, Brown didn’t know what he was talking about. Brown was apparently just shooting his mouth off. Such reckless remarks and a clear disregard of the truth . . . umm, wait . . . no a total lack of concern for even educating oneself about the truth . . . do not inspire me with confidence in this person who holds the lofty position of U.S. Senator.

State Rep. Dan Ramos urged voters to scrutinize candidates’ records. I wonder if Ramos supposes that such scrutiny would lead to the conclusion that every Republican is unworthy of support. Of course, those who are the most likely to avoid scrutiny are those who run unopposed. Ramos is running unopposed. Such a shame. We need to do something about that. Maybe I, myself, need to do something about that.

But in a related CT story, I don’t have to wonder where local Democrat Party boss Anthony Giardini stands on who is worthy and unworthy of support. Whoever Giardini handpicks is worthy of support and no one else. Two members of Lorain City Council ran for election as independents, and that sticks in Giardini’s craw. Tim Carrion publicly revealed that, next year, he will challenge the Giardini-supported incumbent Democrat mayor of Lorain. Carrion has not firmly decided whether he will run as a Democrat or as an independent. Giardini, who would prefer that every Lorain officeholder be his pawn, strongly expressed that Carrion should mount his mayoral challenge within the Democrat primary. While expressing this, Giardini does not have an open mind about Carrion as a candidate, for he already backs the incumbent. With the party boss already choosing sides, why would Carrion feel it’s in his best interests to run in the primary as a Democrat rather than as an independent in the general election? Giardini offered that if Carrion beat the incumbent in the primary that he would support him in the general election. If Carrion chooses to challenge in the primary, then, purely statistically–like a coin toss–without taking any other factors into consideration, Carrion only has half a chance of advancing to the general election. As an independent, Carrion guarantees that he advances to the general election. As an independent, yes, Carrion would definitely not have Giardini’s blessing, whereas he has some chance of securing Giardini’s blessing if he won a Democrat primary, but is a primary contest really worth it when Giardini is clearly not going to remain neutral in the primary? If Giardini would vow strict neutrality in the primary, and not try to tip the scales, I think, if Carrion views Giardini as trustworthy, then running in the primary would make total sense. Absent that, Carrion should go independent all the way.

I have to admit to some measure of delight that a couple of union-backed independent members of city council have ripped a page out of Giardini’s playbook of machine politics to beat a couple of Giardini’s handpicked candidates. Giardini’s Democrat political machine has always relied heavily on union members’ contributions to make it work, and those wins serve as reminders to political bosses to not take those key contributors for granted or turn them into pawns.

The MJ story by Richard Payerchin offers some hope that local union leadership will be more open to forging alliances with Republicans sympathetic to worker interests. Jim Slone’s (Lorain County CAP Council of the UAW) declaration that he is a unionist before he is a Democrat doesn’t exactly translate into a willingness to ally with Republicans, but it seems to leave the door open to that. Similarly, Harry Williamson’s (Lorain County AFL-CIO) observation that, “I’ve emphasized that specifically here in Lorain County, history’s always shown that labor has been a D-type (Democratic) organization. As workers, we have to get away from that mindset,” is even more encouraging since it was coupled by an example of an actual former Republican officeholder that was a friend to labor. Keith Hocevar’s (Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 16) assurance that, “In the building trades, we talk to both sides; we talk to Democrats and Republicans in races. For us, we look at individual races and talk to the candidates and talk to the candidates who support our issues,” is the most comforting. I hope that Dan Ramos and Sherrod Brown carefully read those statements, as they paint the GOP with such broad brushes as to suggest Republicans are monolithic in their political views. They should campaign on their own virtues vis-a-vis the candidates they face. Voters need to know that while some candidates are willing to be party pawns, others are too principled to allow themselves to be treated as pawns. It is the voters’ responsibility to determine which is which, and when they find a principled candidate, it behooves voters to demand to know just what those principles are before they cast their votes. I have always maintained that one should vote for the person, not the party. Voting for a party slate assembled by political insiders is why nations governed by parliaments are inferior to the elections conducted within America’s system of government.

In both the CT and MJ articles, John Kasich was held up as an object of scorn. In closing, let me offer this head’s up. When it comes to opposition to unions, John Kasich is nothing compared to Jon Husted. I sure hope Husted is not the “anointed” GOP candidate for Ohio Governor in 2018. If he is, I sure hope he is vigorously contested in the GOP primary. Husted is a prime example of pay-to-play politics. I would not cast a vote for Husted even if he ran unopposed, whether in a primary or in a general election.

It has been a long time since I last checked the links on my blogroll. I have made changes. Deletions from the blogroll were based on links that stopped working, links that redirected to a totally unrelated page, blogs that were blank, blogs that were password protected, or blogs that hadn’t added content in years.

If you own a website that was deleted and you would like it reinstated, you should probably include an explanation of why I found what I found when I clicked on your link. If for example, your link was dead because you changed your URL, then I’d be happy to revisit my decision to delete.

After those deletions, I am looking to add to the blogroll. I will be on the lookout for blogs that are Ohio-based and/or politics-based. North central Ohio, like the counties along the Lake Erie shoreline between Cleveland and Toledo and a little further inland, is what I consider my home territory, for I have resided in Erie, Seneca, and Lorain counties (Franklin County, too, but plenty of blogs cover Columbus). Huron, Sandusky, and Ottawa counties are of interest, too. If you would like your blog added to my blogroll, give me a holler (my profile with email appears on the About page). As you know, I identify myself politically as being right-of-center (even though there are those who disbelieve my self-assessment).

On another note, I was stunned to see that WordPress had begun to place ads on my site. I paid WordPress extra money just to keep my blog advertisement-free. If you see ads crop up on Buckeye RINO, I’d appreciate it if you would let me know so that I can investigate.

For social networking, I have been using just Twitter, as I find it least annoying among social networking sites. I once had Facebook and a few others, but I hated them, so I pulled the plug on them. However, if readers have a social networking site that they want to recommend, let me know, and if you really think I should return to Facebook, I will entertain your arguments (but make them good, since I’ll be difficult to persuade).

There is an alternative weekly paper in Columbus, called The Other Paper, who has a managing editor named Dan Williamson. He sometimes writes articles that include political figures and political issues.

I’m also known as Dan Williamson. My first media exposure in a political vein occurred when I was a Republican candidate running for state representative against incumbent Democrat Joe Koziura, of Lorain, in Ohio’s 56th House District in 2002. I listed my name on the ballot as Daniel Jack Williamson for two reasons, one reason being that my dad, Jack Williamson of rural Bellevue in Seneca County, was a candidate in the Republican primary for an open seat in the 58th House District, which neighbors the 56th, and I thought where media coverage about those two state rep races overlaps, my middle name on the ballot might somehow improve his name recognition. I wrote letters to the editors of newspapers, and I posted comments at an online community forum at LorainCounty.com, but that was just about the greatest extent of my writing contributions to the media at that time. I ran again for state rep in 2004 (an image of my 2004 campaign literature here–you’ll have to scroll to see the whole image). My political writing had not expanded beyond what it had been during the 2002 campaign.

In early 2005, not long after losing (again) the election in November 2004, I went to South Korea to teach English for a year (image), so I wasn’t even posting online comments at Lorain County.com during that time. In early 2006, I was back to posting online, but my comments, critical of Sherrod Brown before Paul Hackett withdrew from the Democrat primary for the U.S. Senate seat, kept getting deleted by the website, and after that, my comments went to moderation, and it would be about 24 hours before my comment would actually appear. By then, the conversation thread had lengthened quite a bit, so my comments weren’t likely to be read when they did appear. That’s when I started looking to other blogs to comment. In 2007, I began contributing entries to blogs.

In the early 1990’s, I was living in Columbus. The Other Paper had emerged on the Columbus print media scene. Dan Williamson became a known byline. Most of my friends and co-workers called me Dan. I didn’t realize that some of them were confusing me with the journalist until the secretary of my boss at National City Bank (where I worked from September 1993 through May 1995 as a teller) gave me a compliment about my writing. LOL! I quickly corrected her and said that it wasn’t me. Until I moved out of Columbus at the very start of January 2000, I’d had a number of people approaching me similarly, and these were people who knew me quite well, some of whom I saw nearly every day!

So, the second reason I chose to include my middle name on the ballot? Because I already knew that people had been confusing me with the journalist for years, and that if I received media coverage as a candidate, I hoped that including my middle name would spare media observers the confusion. I continued using that middle name when I made my first foray into blogging for much the same reason.

But I suppose that once I start generating political commentary, and, in a sense, entering the arena that the journalist was already in, I suppose it was inevitable that the confusion would arise anyway. And so I guess writing this blog entry to set the record straight was inevitable.

During the past week, I was startled to hear of the resignation of Matthew Barrett, the 58th District state representative that I voted for in 2006.

I ran for state representative, myself, in a neighboring district (the 56th), in the opposing political party, back in 2004, when I first met Barrett, who is a lawyer by profession. More than once, we were present at the same venues on the campaign trail. On occasion, I would be his foil for the points he’d make at debates, since his own opponent from his own district wouldn’t debate him. Though I had differences of political opinion with Barrett, he seemed like a straight-shooter, a family man, a person of integrity and intelligence, so I respected him. Neither Barrett nor I won election in 2004.

Between 2004 and 2006, I changed my residence from Oberlin, in Lorain County, to rural Bellevue, in Seneca County. When election time rolled around in November 2004, I was living in the same district as Barrett, and Barrett was a candidate again. Barrett’s a Democrat and I’m a Republican. The Republican nominee that was opposing Barrett was not someone that I supported. I decided to cross over and vote for Barrett that November, and Barrett won in a district that was more Republican than Democrat.

Barrett seemed to vote the right way (in my opinion) on many of the issues that came before the state legislature once he took office. He certainly seemed approachable and available to constituents. He even agreed to make a presentation to a high school class about some of the workings of state government, but what happened in that high school class was his undoing.

Last fall, in Norwalk, Ohio, State Representative Matt Barrett was making a presentation to a high school class. He had intended to illustrate his lecture with slides that had been prepared for him using PowerPoint on his laptop computer. The PowerPoint presentation was saved to a flash drive. However, when the first images appeared on the projection screen, they had nothing to do with state government. The first image was of a topless woman. An embarrassed Barrett shut off the PowerPoint presentation. It made news right away, but Barrett pleaded for the media to not pursue the matter further, as it was supposed that a teenage son of Barrett’s may have been the one who downloaded the images to a flash drive that overwrote the PowerPoint presentation that had previously been there. The premise for asking the media to let coverage of the event subside was that this was a parenting problem best handled within the family. The police, however, did carry out an investigation.

Several months have passed, and Barrett’s resignation is occurring now because the police investigation does not arrive at the same conclusion that was first arrived at. Apparently, a teenage son was used as a scapegoat. Barrett’s story wasn’t entirely truthful.

The Democrat Party members of the Ohio House of Representatives will choose a Democrat residing in the district to replace Matt Barrett. However, there will be elections this coming November. Barrett had won a Republican district. Is there anyone the Democrats can choose as a replacement who can hold that seat for the Democrats after the elections are over? I doubt that very much. Not only is it a Republican district, but the Republican nominee, Terry Boose has to feel like he’s been handed a gift. The Boose name is a respected name in Huron County (the county where half of the voters of the district live). The Boose family name has been familiar to me since my childhood when I lived in Berlin Heights, a village in Erie County that’s not far from the Norwalk area.

What should Barrett have done last fall when this event occurred? If he had told the truth, he still might have faced resignation, but the Democrats would have named a replacement much sooner, certainly before the current campaign season began, and his political party would have stood a better chance at holding on to the seat beyond the upcoming elections. Also, it is uncertain at this point whether the state bar association will consider seeking any disciplinary actions against Barrett for not telling the truth. If he had told the truth, he wouldn’t have put his employment as a lawyer at risk (he might have an out if he told the truth to the police, but we don’t know yet if that’s the case). Also, if he had told the truth, the media stories would have flourished for a short season, but then come to an end, and the embarrassment would have gone away sooner. Since the truth wasn’t told, this became a media story AGAIN, months later, not allowing the embarrassment to go away shortly after the first incident. Covering up only added another problem onto the one that already existed.

Though I’m Republican, I’m sad to see Barrett go down like this. After all, I voted for him.

I am Daniel Jack Williamson, a graduate of The Ohio State University, a native of Ohio, a Republican voter, and a former Republican candidate. My moniker, "Buckeye RINO," is a hat-tip to my fellow conservatives who think I'm not Republican enough.